Runaway: Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Chapter 4

I quit my job today.  Correct, I got a job, despite not technically existing:  no SSN, no bank accounts.  No facebook or Instagram or twitter.  That was a depressing google search. You’d be surprised, though, how many under-the-table jobs there still are these days.  Or maybe you wouldn’t.  I wasn’t, though. 

Until recently, I was waitressing at a little truck stop just off the interstate, pouring coffee, bringing burgers, pulling the graveyard shift and calling good ol’ boys “hun” like my name was Flo.  It didn’t pay much, but the tips were pretty good.  Good enough.  I’ve got cheap rent, roommates that leave me alone and no dependents.  

Relatively safe work, too.  The guys were all big and hairy and burly.  But they were also old, or tired, or coming down from whatever they’d popped or smoked that let them drive for twenty hours straight. 

Most of them just wanted a belly full of ground beef and a quick hot shower before hunkering down in their cab for a couple of hours.  A lot of them had wedding rings on, too.  

Little pieces of metal don’t stop married men from being misogynistic assholes or cheating, but dumb fucks think twice when their waitress uses ice breakers like “How long you been away from your family?”  

Point being, for the last couple of months, most people I’ve met only grab at patty melts or open their mouths to take a sip of something. 

Good.  

That’s the kind of human interaction I’ve been best with lately.  

The hours I’ve kept have been a mental victory, too.  I’d start work long after the sun had gone down and kept right on at it until an hour or so past dawn. Then I’d sleep till midafternoon just so I could wake up and do it all over again.

That’s right: stay up way past my bedtime. Sleep all through daycare.  Eat a hotdog and soda for breakfast. 

Big girl hours. 

Fuck you, Mommy Dearest.

...

Shit.

It’s when I write stuff like that that I wonder if really ever escaped. 

Poor phrasing.  

I know I got out.  

I’m certain.  

Almost ninety percent positive most nights.

What I really mean is, how much of me is what the Green Lady made of me and how much of what I am is still me me?  How much of me is who I was before I woke up in the Land, and how much are attitudes and habits that came back with me when I escaped?

I’m reasonably certain that Peter wasn’t the type of guy who enjoyed taking dumps in his pants right before a long stroller nap.  It came pretty naturally to him by the time we’d met, though.

How much of me is talking about stuff in terms of “big girl” spitefully or ironically and how much is because those terms are the ones that feel right? How much of my fucked up mindframe is “magic” and how much is just good old fashioned conditioning and PTSD?  How much is curse and how much is just serious baggage?

That’s what this writing is at the core: me trying to unpack my all of this baggage when really what I most want to do is throw the whole fucking thing in the fireplace.

Anyways, what happened tonight was I saw a nickel on the floor and bent over to pick it up.  Loose change.  The kind no one would miss.  The kind that I didn’t even want, but damn it all, it was gonna bug me just laying there.  Fucking little metal circle had been dropped there for at least two customers and no one else was picking it up, and it was starting to pick up the dirt from passerby’s boots.

So I bent over to pick it up, not even thinking, and some fifty year old jerkoff swung his arm around and smacked me on the ass.

That’s it.

That’s all.  

No ZOT.  

No memory loss.

No barrage of swats or so-very-grown-up type of admonishments on what a naughty little girl I’ve been.  No pulling me over anyone’s lap and hiking up my dress.  No remarks that I shouldn’t be wearing big girl panties and yanking them down and off my ankles with promises that I’ll be back in diapers soon enough.

Nothing like that happened.  Just a swat on the ass from a fuckwad old enough to be my Daddy...father….fuck!   

Old asshole smacked my ass.  I don’t think it even made a sound.

Point is, it was just a prick being a prick.  I’d like to think that a lifetime ago I would have broken his thumb, or decked him.  Slapped the taste of greased meat out of his mouth.  Or at least give the ol’ “try that again and you’ll pull back a stump” line that you see in the movies.  I could have told John Boy, the fry cook, to bounce the guy out into the parking lot or at least spit in his hashbrowns.

But I just collapsed. I went fetal and started crying.  Bawling.  I didn’t even think about it.  It was reflex.  And then my mouth started betraying me.  “Please don’t!” I said…”please don’t!  I’m sorry!”  And I kept saying it again and again and again as loud as I could. 

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

I didn’t see as much as I heard what came next.  

John Boy running out of the kitchen.  The asshole’s chair skidding back and him apologizing and saying he didn’t do anything.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  I didn’t do anything! I’m sorry!”   Then changing his story to he accidentally brushed me, then it was he didn’t think he slapped me so hard.  

John Boy wasn’t having any of it.  Asshole was a shit liar and changed his story like three times within thirty seconds.  Then from my spot on the floor I heard.  “Holy shit...she’s just a...just a…I didn’t mean to.  I didn’t know...I never woulda iffa…”  And then his mouth went quiet and his feet went loud, the little buzz sensor on the door chiming off when he ran.

The door let in a breeze and I figured it out. One of my ears was showing.  I wear my hair down these days, but enough of it had gotten mussed up that a pointy top was showing.  I scrambled and covered it up, leaping to my feet.  

I tried to look brave and recover.  I probably failed.

John Boy asked me if I was okay.  I wasn’t. I really wasn’t. As of this writing, it’s almost 11:00am and I should be passed out but I can’t sleep.  

I ran to the ladies room to make sure I hadn’t peed (I hadn’t).  

Then I quit.

I grabbed some day old bread rolls for the biscuits and gravy, a half empty carton of milk, took my tips, and walked out.  John Boy tried to convince me to finish my shift at least, and it took everything I could not to completely bite his head off.  

He looked confused and hurt.  Maybe a little mad.  I told him I was sorry before I ran out the door.  It wasn’t his fault.  I wasn’t even mad at him.  I wasn’t even mad at the asshole who tried to play grabass.  Not really.  I yelled at John Boy though. I yelled at him because he was the only one around who was safe to yell at.  He didn’t deserve it, but I hope he was able to handle it.

It wasn’t even a big thing, that slap on the ass.  Not really. Not “quitting my job” big.  It wasn’t even anybody who worked there’s fault.  But it set me off and brought back way too many of the memories that I didn’t want.  And everybody there saw me have my little panic attack.  Heard me cry and wail like a three year old at K-Mart.  Saw me crumple and go fetal.  

Some of them might even have seen my ears.  Once normal people see the little tips up top peeking out, they never treat me the same.  I couldn’t risk it.  

Point is, if I had finished the shift, if I went into work later tonight, I’d never be “Alice the waitress” again.  I wouldn’t be “Alice the quiet girl,” either.  I’m sure that to a few of the other servers or dish washers I was “Alice the loner” or “Alice the snob.”  I’d turned down enough invites to hang out after work and get brinner to be known as that to some of them since they stopped asking.

If I hadn’t quit, I’d be “Alice the crazy girl” from now on.  “Alice the basket case.”  People would start talking about it, looking into it.  Have an itch to gossip and start digging.

Now?  Yeah, they’ll talk.  Bitching, mostly.  But after the shifts get shuffled around and a new body comes in to replace me, they’ll forget about me. Within the year I’ll be “that one waitress...what’s her name who broke down and cried out of nowhere and then quit.”  Then I won’t be anyone.

Good.  Maybe they’ll be safer that way.  Or at least they won’t see it coming.  There might be a kind of mercy.  Maybe they’ll read this somehow and learn the truth instead.  I’d be okay with that.  I’d explain it to more people in person if they’d believe me.

John Boy might have believed me if I’d given him the chance.  “Get help,” was the last thing he told me before I ran out the door.  And it wasn’t sarcastic like he was washing his hands of me.  It was genuine and kind.  Like he was worried about me. 

I’ll miss John Boy.  Probably like I miss Peter.

Time doesn’t work in the Land like it does in the Real.  It’s not a unit of precise measurement that goes on with or without you, like it is here.  It’s more like the temperature in a well insulated house with central heating and air.  It’s just another factor of the environment.  Temperature, humidity, time.  

Wherever a particular Fay controls or holds enough sway, time bends to His or Her whim.  It’s one of the reasons I got used to naps that seemed to last for six hours, or how half an hour at the playground flew by in the span of five minutes.  To me and the other prisoners (I REFUSE to call them babies), time wasn’t a factor we could rely on.  It was another thing out of our control and another motivator to do whatever the titan that called itself your Mommy or Daddy told you. 

Time was not on your side, and there was no way to run out the clock or stall.  Over There, things run on Their schedules, not yours.  

It makes sense to the Mad Gods that run the place.  I can’t tell you if They experience time There like we do here.  I don’t know if a three-week hour at the beach and a two-minute hour at the beach feel like three weeks, two minutes, or just an hour through Fay lenses.

The Green Lady and Her kind weren’t the type to tell us what they were really thinking, or their rhyme or reason for anything.  “Why,” if it was answered at all, was usually answered with a smiling “because” if She was feeling generous, and a threatening “because I said so” if not.

All I know is that things like fatigue, hunger, boredom and waste elimination went right on trucking for those of us abducted,  and that magical diaper bags always seem to have just enough supplies to compensate.

No single Fay holds sway over the entire Land, and so a big black blank slate is the most common sky I got to see.  The fact that I got to “see” a completely blank canvas for a night sky was something that I didn’t immediately appreciate.

It was weird and genuinely hard to describe.  I’m struggling to come up with words for it, even though sometimes it feels like my brain got spliced with middle school poet and a dockworker.  There should be plenty of ways to write about it but all I can come up with is “pure black, but you could still see it.”

Outside the Green Lady’s house there was no road or steps or ground.  Just black.  Black up. Black down.  Black all around.  Kind of like that old Daffy Duck cartoon where he’s walking around the drawing board, except…

Black.

Could still see well though.  It was kind of like when you walk into a movie theater before the picture begins.  The colors are muted and it’s dark, but your brain kind of subconsciously edits out the ceiling lights, so you’re in a dark calm room where you can still see almost perfectly until it’s time for previews.  It’s kind of like that, I guess.

So much weird stuff happened back-to-back those first few (days? hours?) times that it didn’t initially register to me that being able to see with absolutely no light sources might be an odd thing.  I was being toted topless by an ivy colored Woman.  I was wearing a diaper that I’d been changed into after being spanked nearly hairless. Teeth were magically retractable now.  The nearest “normal” person was sleeping in an automated stroller while his shadow slept on the kitchen floor.

Weirder shit had already happened.    

Riding on her hip, I’d been given a good view of ahead and behind me.  It was not pleasant.  There’s no horizon out there in the Big Black Blank.  No moment of “here it comes” or “there it goes”.  Things are either right there or they’re not.  Very much like in a dream.  Everything is either in your face or it might not exist.

The three of us were about thirty feet out of that house- a cat’s-eye-yellow, vine-covered single story- when it disappeared.  More accurately, it warped as in Star Trek or jumped into hyperdrive like in Star Wars.  One step and it was there, and the next it wasn’t, leaving a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it twisted afterimage to let you know that something used to be there.  

Sidenote: Being able to pee outside my pants is great and still feels like a major accomplishment, but having a world that gives me some semblance of object permanence feels like a miracle.

I must have gasped or jolted or something, because my captor reacted to my surprise.   “Say bye bye house.” She said in a gentle cooing cadence that I’d soon become very familiar with.  I said nothing, more out of shock than anything.   I wasn’t looking at Her but I felt her smile fade into crisp flat line.   “I said, ‘Say bye bye house.’”  The edge was back and it snapped me out of it.

“Bye bye house.”

“Thassa good girl.”  She favored my chin with a light tickle.

It was silent for a while after that.  Peter’s snoring mixed in with the engine rumbling of his stroller, but that was it.  The Green Lady’s foot step didn’t even make a sound trudging through the infinite blackness.  We might have been on a cosmic treadmill for all I’d known.  The same shocking, startling there-and-gone logic applied to what few landmarks or pieces of scenery I could make out along the periphery.  

Once or twice that trip, I was able to make out specific places.  A pasture with cotton candy grass and electric blue sheep to the right of us.   A molten lava waterfall with a glass Statue of Liberty at the bottom to the left.  They’d zip into view for a dozen or so steps and zip out of view on what felt like step thirteen.

Other things constantly popped in and out of the darkness, less specific looking places and more bizarre landmarks:  a screaming tree that flapped about like a tube man at a used car lot, a tumbleweed made out of snakes, a semi truck that rang a chirpy little bicycle bell instead of honking a deep booming horn, the Blues Brothers rendered unnaturally black and white dancing to Soul Man while shouting “Kill Us!  Please Kill Us!”

Everything popped up at random distances too.  The screaming tree had been a good thirty feet away when it zipped in and out of view.  The semi had been so close that I felt the breeze as it passed by, chirping its bicycle bell.

It’s not something that I can ever remember or imagine getting used to.  Let’s just say that there were trips where it was a good thing I was wearing a diaper.  You try keeping your pants clean when the bloody disembodied head of Karl Marx starts vomiting up vodka and chicken wings right by your stroller!  Objectively speaking, it would have been great if it were a haunted house.  

I was carried through the darkness in silence a little longer.  Like I’ve said, time is an imprecise thing to measure in the Land Beyond the Real.  I didn’t consciously think about counting steps or Mississippis and only realized how quiet things were or how long we’d been walking when I felt a slight tingle in my bladder.

It wasn’t a major thing, to be honest.  Not overwhelming in the slightest. Not even close to full.  If I hadn’t been in a diaper and had literally any other thing to think about, I doubt I would have noticed.  You start thinking about your bladder a lot more when your toilet is wrapped around your butt, at first anyhow.

It was gonna drive me crazy.  That little twinge was turning into an itch that I was NOT going to scratch just then.  I finally got the courage and broke the silence, “Where are we going?”  No response. “Mommy Dearest?” I asked again. “Where are we going?”  The Green Lady often acted more like a machine, playing by pre-programmed rules rather than any sense.

“Shopping.”  The Green Lady replied, as if that explained enough.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”  I asked.  No reply.  “Because why, Mommy Dearest?”  Looking back on it, even then she was conditioning me.  She gave me a little bounce on her hip, but gave no further answer.  “When will I be going home?”  That was a stupid question.  I knew it before I even asked it.  Never ask your kidnapper when you’re going home.  You’ll never like the answer, and if you do, that answer is a lie.

The Green Lady hummed to herself, as if thinking. “After shopping,” she said.  “Assuming we don’t stop for lunch.”

“I mean...my home…”  Okay yeah...that was dumb.  She totally knew what I meant, and if she didn’t, clarifying it wouldn’t have helped.

She laughed through her nose at that as if I’d said something funny and bounced me a little on her hip.  In his stroller, Peter was still snoring.  I re-shut my mouth.

Another person- another Fay, that is-  popped into existence. A woman, just like my captor.  Instead of ivy green, this one was sapphire blue.  Her skin was constantly dripping like she’d just gotten out of the shower, and her hair dripped down in flowing clumps of tropical yellow, green, and pink.  

Very punk rock.

This new Fay was a little shorter than the Green Lady, but had bigger hips and slightly smaller breasts.  Her eyes looked normal, except when she blinked you could sometimes make out the clear membrane between her eye and lids.  Built-in goggles. 

New Woman looked a little younger too; early twenties to my green captor’s thirtyish look. Less clothing as well; sapphire nipples covered with a bra made of tiny stuck together seashells and a skirt made of seaweed that was constantly wafting and dripping, never still.  No Mommy vibes.  No babied humans with Her either.  

 If the Green Lady was “Mommy Dearest”, this one would have been “Slutty Sorority Sister.”
 

I immediately liked Her better. 

When you’re a little kid the first time around, adults seem like this entirely different species.  They don’t look like you, they don’t talk like you, and they seem to operate on this completely different set of rules from the way they dress to what they like to eat to how they talk to each other.  

Adults can ignore you. Shush you.  Talk over you.  Talk about you like you’re not even there.  The rules don’t make much sense, but you go along with them because you’re not the one in control at the time.  Eventually, it clicks that things like being little and big are transitory periods, and the people who are controlling every aspect of your life are actually part of the same species as you.    

One day you’ll be big too and all of this will make sense.  And sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, but it gives you patience. Your parents were just like you and one day you’ll be just like them. You won’t be little forever.  One day you’ll be big, or at least big enough...maybe bigger.

But what if you didn’t?  What if Little and Big were as different as cat and dog?  Nouns instead of adjectives? They could cohabitate and imitate each other in ways, but they’d never be the same animal.

What if that understanding that you’d turn into a big person never clicked because that just wasn’t the case? What if the rules never made sense and you never got control and the person controlling your life never let up because you were never going to turn into them?  Would being little be nearly so well remembered or tolerated?

That’s what it was like, just then.  I was a baby on this thing called “Mommy’s” hip, and another thing like Her came up and started talking to Her.  I didn’t have the wits or sense to make heads or tails of it.  Most likely I never would.  All I could do was sit there, try to be comfortable, and let the Things that weren’t like me talk to each other and do my best to not interrupt unless I wanted a spanking.

I felt very little.  Very. Very. Little. 

Mommy Dearest stopped walking and took a moment to regard this new figure in Her path.  Blue’s eyes flitted to me, registering my presence but not acknowledging it.

Very little.

“Green Lady...” She said.  Her tone was short and formal.

“Blue Maiden…” Mommy Dearest answered matched the tone.

“You’re looking radiant as usual.” The other one, the Blue Maiden, did a curtsey with her sea grass skirt. “Perhaps regal?”

My captor did not return the gesture.  Not in tone. Not in body language.  “Perhaps not.”

Blue Maiden stood back up.  “Very well,” She said. “Perhaps not.  I retract my compliment.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a pause.  Neither of Them moved. “You look particularly lusty, Blue Maiden,” Mommy Dearest said.  “Many men would wish to lay with you so that they might steal your virginity again.”

The other Fay’s eyes sparkled a bit...not literally...just hopeful.  “Enough to drown themselves in the attempt?” she asked.  

Green Lady’s hand went to her chin; deep in thought.  “Hmmm...perhaps not.” she said.  The Blue Maiden’s shoulders slumped. “Their lust might yet empower them to reach you and then they’ll have you to sheathe themselves and steal your warmth.”  Rape?  Were they talking about rape? Rape and men drowning trying to swim out to Her and rape?  I think they were, but it had all the casualness of two women giving makeover tips to each other.   “Turn around.”

The Blue Maiden did as she was told, facing the opposite direction and giving us both a good look at her coral colored hair.  “Your hair,” The Green Lady asked, “Does it strangle?”

The sapphire colored Fay turned back around “It does not,” She said, twirling a strand around her pinky finger. “ It did, but I sold the strangling to replace my maidenhead after a particularly bad go of it.”

“Maiden...head….”  my captor said.  “Maiden...HEAD…”

Blue skin looked hopeful. “Yes?”

“How would you feel about a second head? A face, rather.  Hidden by your hair?”

“And attract more men to drown no matter which way on my rock I face?”

I just gawked as my green fleshed captor shook Her head.  “No, to frighten them,” She said.  “Show them your beauty and then once they are past the halfway point, turn and part your hair so that they will cower and flee.  They may well drown on the way back, and then the game will be yours.”  

The Blue Maiden clicked her tongue, thinking.  It sounded like dolphin clicks.  “But then they might not drown and would tell other men of my hideous second face.  The game will be over and then never played again.”  My heart was speeding up.  They really WERE talking about what I thought they were talking about.  Only it was more like one woman asking another for dating tips instead of drowning.

“If they don’t drown on the way back,” Mommy Dearest said, “they wouldn’t have drowned getting to your rock and the game would have ended anyway.”  She started bouncing me again like I was a fussy toddler.  Petting my hair.  Checking my diaper.  All while explaining the subtle nuances of drowning sailors.  “Take a Janus face, and the game will be over yet your virginity will remain intact.  And if survivors tell other men, curiosity shall get the best of them and they will come to see for themselves.  Monster slayers and would-be stallions will seek you out.  It does not matter if they wish to spill your blood or their seed, both will be equally ensorcelled by your beauty.  The game shall begin anew and you’ll have double the players.”

The Blue Maiden smiled.  “You are sagacious, as always.”

“That is a compliment that I will  take.”

“What do you wish for payment, Green Lady?”

“Since I did not name a price, the compliment shall suffice.  That, and you must tell this tale in secrecy at the next High Tea should this advice prove of use.”

“Of course.  Of course.  I thank you.  I will leave you to your children.”

Feet started moving again and Peter and I were left alone with our so-called Mommy.  I wondered if we had blinked out of existence for The Blue Maiden like She had blinked out for us.

It wasn’t long until I was talking again. “Mommy Dearest?” 

“Yes Alice?” She said.

“Who was that?”

“That was the Blue Maiden, my sweet.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

She laughed that bubbly, butterfly laughter of Hers.  “Oh don’t be silly, Alice.  Only babies have friends.”  Only babies have friends.  I let the matter drop there. 

It wasn’t long before yet another stranger crossed our path.  He looked human, mostly.  More so than any of the Fay Women that I’d seen thus far. He was old and hunched over, with a Dumbledore-type beard that ended down near His knees and only a few strands of wild Bernie Sanders hair up near the top of His head.  He leaned on an old gnarled cane and had a sour puss expression.  

I almost thought he was just a grumpy old man. His eyes, though... 

Correction.  Eye. Singular.  

I stopped thinking of Him as a potential human the moment I saw that single empty eye socket in the middle of His forehead.  Little erratic flashes erupted inside, like it was the window to a raging storm.

“Green Lady,” He said when he warped into view.  Even His voice had a hint of thunder rumbling every time He talked.

Once again, the stroller, Peter, The Green Lady and myself stopped.  I had resigned myself to being a passenger and not a driver.  “Grandfather Thunder,”  She said.

Grandfather Thunder appeared different in other ways that had nothing to do with the freaky physical features that were quickly becoming normal to me.  It was where he stood and how he carried himself.  

The Blue Maiden had appeared up front and to the side of us.  She was a passing stranger looking for advice.  The old cyclops blinked into existence front and center of our path.  A guard. Challenging.  Suspicious.  Intimidating.  My so-called Mommy didn’t jump, but She was definitely put off a little bit.  There’s only so much that can be hidden from someone you’re carrying.


The Old Man’s cane pointed up to me.  It still had a tennis ball on the end.  Weird.  “I see you have a new ward.”  This was not a conversation starter.  It was an interrogation starter.

When the Green Lady replied, Her tone was different too.  There was that same reserved cockiness, that same bit of know-it-all, but there was something else, too.  Wariness.  A hint of fear.  “I do.”

Grandfather’s empty eye narrowed.  “Yet you have no clothes on her.”

“I do not.”

“Nor a method of conveyance it would seem.”

“So it would seem.”

He looked at the giant racecar stroller that Peter was napping in.  “Are you replacing the boy?” My heart stopped for a second.  I’d just listened to two monsters talk shop about luring in and drowning men with the promise of a cheap lay.  There weren’t many dots to connect for what “replace” meant.

“I am not.”

“There are those who lack wards at all, and you would take two for yourself.”  An accusation. Not a question.

“I have much to give.”  She seemed to stand, or even grow, a little taller.

“Yet your girl looks like a squalling gutter orphan.”

A pair of unblinking yellow cats’ eyes fell on me. “She does. A bit.”  I was too nervous to be insulted.

A low rumble. “Can you not provide?” 

“I can.”

“Yet you lacked the foresight to prepare for her arrival.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  When they opened, I saw that they weren’t yellow.  They were brown eyes.  Human eyes.   Like mine.  “I did not wish to assume I’d be granted access to the Ward Room,” she said.  “Alice has a crib and a toy box and a changing table.  Anything else so far in advance might have been seen as presumptuous. “

“It might have.”

“There are those who lack wards at all and I sought two.  Would it have been prudent to fully prepare as if I knew I would get my way all along?”  She asked.  When I looked, her eyes had gone full cat again.

“That it would not,”  He snorted.  “Very well, Green Lady.  Be on your way.  I wish you a good day.”

“Thank you Grandfather Thunder, but I’m already having one.  I shall, however, save your wish for when I’m in need.”

The Old Man with the cyclops skull stepped aside and was blinked out within a few strides, just as quickly as He’d blinked in.  And just as quickly as he’d blinked out, we’d blinked in somewhere else. 

The motor car engine of the Peter’s stroller revved a bit and the Green Lady’s footfalls started making noise the ground went from pure blackness to cobbled streets.  Strange smells, sounds, and sights bombarded my senses as warm air rushed onto my skin.

“Where are we?” Peter asked.  Awake.  Finally. Only it came out as “Way awe we?”  His teeth hadn’t grown back in.

Our Mommy didn’t respond.  Not directly.  All she did was look me in the eye and say “Let’s go shopping…”